They had been duskier still, however, these recesses of her imagination--that, no doubt, was what might at present be said for them.

She had looked into them, on the eve of her leaving town, almost without penetration: she had made out in those hours, and also, of a truth, during the days which immediately followed, little more than the strangeness of a relation having for its chief mark--whether to be prolonged or not--the absence of any "intimate" result of the crisis she had invited her husband to recognise.

They had dealt with this crisis again, face to face, very briefly, the morning after the scene in her room--but with the odd consequence of her having appeared merely to leave it on his hands.

He had received it from her as he might have received a bunch of keys or a list of commissions--attentive to her instructions about them, but only putting them, for the time, very carefully and safely, into his pocket.

The instructions had seemed, from day to day, to make so little difference for his behaviour--that is for his speech or his silence; to produce, as yet, so little of the fruit of action.